How to have maximum influence on politicians

Many people
feel they have no say at all in what the government decides to do. Government
policy seems to be hammered out in a world of its own among party leaders, a few
influential MPs, and a select group of privileged and well-connected
individuals who know how to pull strings in high places.

In
the most extreme form of this style of politics, the Prime Minister tells the
Cabinet what to do, the PM and the Cabinet tell Parliament what to do, and
these three august bodies tell you and me what to do. Meanwhile, a few
influential people have the privileged position of being able to put some
pressure on the PM and cabinet ministers. These are usually powerful business
leaders, the heads of some of the larger NGOs, and perhaps a few religious or
community leaders.

Ordinary
people have virtually no power or influence at all.

But this
isn’t how our democratic system is meant to function. In point of fact,
ordinary voters like you and me have all the power. The voters
hire and fire the politicians when we cast our votes. But we have even more
power than that, because MPs and their party bosses know full well that they
can only stay in power if they keep in favour with their voters. So, not only
do we hire and fire them, we can also instruct them on matters of
policy and parliamentary voting at all times in the electoral cycle.

The thing an
MP most needs assurance of is that his or her majority is safe. They listen
very carefully to the signals from their electorates. They don’t just want to
know what you think and what you feel; they want to know what you feel
strongly enough about to let it influence your vote.

Take, for
example, the Climate Change issue. The Labour government has begun to
make significant moves toward setting up a framework to reduce the UK’s
greenhouse emissions by 60 percent by the year 2050. This is a positive move,
but it has two main weaknesses: 1. 60 percent reductions by 2050 don’t go far
enough, and 2. The government has also committed itself to policies that will
impede the reductions – e.g. widening of motorways and a massive expansion in
air traffic.

Left to
itself and its privileged lobbyists, the government might never meet its
greenhouse gas reduction obligations. So, what do we have to do? We have
to train people everywhere to instruct their politicians to
legislate for a strong and scientifically sound greenhouse gas reduction
regime.

We must not
just ask politicians what their views are on the subject, but tell
them what our views are – and because our views are worked out
(carefully and openly) in the light of the best climate change science, we
must make it clear to them that the climate’s needs are non-negotiable. And
we must tell them that when the next election cycle comes around, our vote
can only go to a candidate whose party is unequivocally committed to
legislation that goes at least this far towards cutting greenhouse gases.

We need to
train people everywhere to talk to their politicians like this.

Marginal seats

In the UK
there’s a strange anomaly in the voting system. Most electorates stay with
the same party from election to election. They’re either safe Labour, safe
Conservative, safe Lib-Dem, safe SNP or safe DUP. Politicians in those
electorates aren’t particularly worried about an issue like this. Their
constituency will most likely vote them back into power no matter what.

But there’s
another group of electorates, known as the ‘marginals.’ These are the
districts with a more finely balanced distribution of voters. Some are
currently held by Labour, but with a small swing they could go Conservative.
Some are Lib-Dem, but with a small swing they could go Labour – and so on. In
these seats the MPs really have to be on their toes. Your impact on your
MP in these seats can be huge, compared to that of people in a safe seat.

The party
bosses are always worried about the marginals – they even talk about the
‘super-marginals’, those 50 or 60 seats that are balanced on a knife-edge and
that could easily decide who wins the next election. They know full well that
the party that wins an election is the party that wins the super-marginals
and the marginals. They listen very carefully to what voters in these seats
have to say.

So we need
to focus our resources quite deliberately in key marginal seats. Certainly we
should keep reaching out to people everywhere, train and encourage voters in
every seat to tell their politicians what they want, but we will maximise our
resources if we do this in a much more concentrated way in the marginals.

You can use
this website to find out which seats near you are marginal, and between which
parties.